“It Is Doable. We Just Have to Want to Do It”—Stella McCartney Urges the Fashion Industry and Consumers to Change Wasteful Ways

What started in 2001 with her quiet, firm resolution not to use leather, last night escalated into Stella McCartney’s full-on challenge to fashion: “We call on the entire industry, brands, and customers to come together and fundamentally change the system.” The boldness and ambition of that statement appeared as a conclusion to McCartney’s stepping-up on stage at the Victoria and Albert Museum to present a plan for a waste-free circular textiles economy (which was authored by Dame Ellen MacArthur). For McCartney, it puts down another milestone in her increasingly public career as an eco-campaigning business leader. In this year of upheaval and change, McCartney says, now is the time for the industry that is the second biggest polluter on the planet to take action. “We are in a moment of change. This is the time to capture people’s imagination, provide solutions, and look at it as a positive,” she said. “I think now, people are ready to listen.”

MacArthur is a British record-breaking solo around-the-world sailor who was radicalized by the evidence of the finite, fast-degrading state of the environment she saw all around her on the high seas. When she came back, she set up the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to research and publish reports on systems solutions to industry ills seven years ago. Last night, the pair were in cahoots in a backstage area which—with accidentally apposite symmetry—was in one of the museum’s galleries of clothes that have lasted for centuries. That exactly pertains to one of the horrifying points McCartney highlights from the report: In our time, we wear and dispose of clothes at a rate never known in human history. “In the last 15 years, we have doubled the amount of clothes we produce,” she said, “and now they get worn an average of three times before they’re thrown away.”

The report is full of such dire statistics. Some are of the global order of things you knew in the back of your mind must be true, such as “one truckload of textiles goes into landfill every second.” Others are things you didn’t know you were doing which are truly awful: How about putting your nylon workoutwear in the washing machine? The non-biodegradable accumulated plastic microfibers released are having a serious impact on the oceans. “Well, you can now buy a bag to wash them in,” McCartney shrugs.

But such small preventative measures are not what she and MacArthur are talking about. Phasing out “substances of concern” entirely is what they’re pushing for, as one point on a list of four major goals. It’s a wholesale change of operations they want; a revolution that will transform a linear economy—produce, consume, dispose—into a circular one which regenerates itself and, yes, makes money in different, non-damaging ways. “Let’s look at it as a business opportunity,” says MacArthur. “Look at The RealReal as one example. This year, they made $500 million, and they’re only six years old.” McCartney was the first luxury designer to sign up to the burgeoning consignment site. The success of that startup is part of the positive breakthrough in consumer attitudes towards ownership and sharing she sees amongst young people, a move toward thinking about beautifully designed and made clothes as products which should have a long life and be enjoyed by many before being recycled. It’s part of a sociological, generational change taking root globally, proof cited by MacArthur: “Look at the Chinese clothes rental business YCloset. It has 5 million subscribers, via an app.”

McCartney and MacArthur walked out to present the report to a sold-out audience of industry figures and suppliers in a talk moderated by Julie Gilhart. The four-point plan comprises phasing out substances of concern to the environment, increasing the utilization of garments, radically improving recycling, and the use of renewable resources with fewer damaging processes. The industrial revolution it would take to be seen through is vast, global, and will require massive investment and enlightened governments to make work, an overhaul of a magnitude that can make a person feel small and helpless just thinking about it. Still, McCartney has her own proof of the motivation which will propel change along—people can adopt mindful and non-damaging practices, and make money out of it, on condition that the design stokes desire. She uses viscose sourced from sustainable forests (the alternative is deforesting woodland at a shocking rate), fashions cashmere from leftover fibers (global demand for cashmere has led to vast tracts of Mongolian grassland being desertified), and uses recycled nylon Econyl fabric in her hit Falabella bags. She’s also instituted many other in-house practices that have spread up the corporate chain and put her company’s owner, Kering, in pole position as an environmentally responsible company. “I have a very healthy business, and I’m small,” she argues, pointing to the potential benefits for much larger beasts in the field. “I just think, if you don’t compromise on style or design, why wouldn’t you be doing this?”

Still, though, what about us? As much as the MacArthur report calls for systemic change that is out of our hands, the end users—we, the fashion consumers—can put our own brakes on, too. Buying and reselling—already something teenagers are showing olders the cash flow benefits of—is growing naturally as a people-driven economic wave, without the intervention of any scientific boffins or governments. Choosing to buy from companies with sustainable and ethical practices is in our power, so is asking brands to be transparent and lobbying elected representatives for legislative change. And as far as your own washing machine goes—and all those gallons of polluting waste water you’re pumping out? McCartney has more eye-opening advice. “We don’t need to wash our clothes anything like as much as we do, it degrades them,” she explains. “I learned that when I was working as a tailoring intern on Savile Row. Why do we wash our clothes so much? Because we’ve been sort of lied to by other industries. Every industry does that for benefit.” Ultimately, whether it’s a matter of changing a personal habit or saving the planet, it’s all about the ability to change minds. The last word to Ellen MacArthur: “It is doable. We just have to want to do it.”